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PATRIOTISM 


Hn  ©ration 


DELIVERED    BEFORE 


THE    PHI    BETA    KAPPA 


OF    HARVARD    COLLEGE,   COMMENCEMENT,    1900, 


BY 


WILLIAM  EVERETT. 


PEACE  ASSOCIATION  OF  FRIENDS, 

20  SOUTH  TWELFTH  STREET, 

PHILADELPHIA, 

1903. 


PATRIOTISM 


Hn  ©ration 


DELIVERED    BEFORE 


THE    PHI    BETA    KAPPA 


OF    HARVARD    COLLEGE,   COMMENCEMENT,    1900. 


BY 

EVERETT. 


PEACE  ASSOCIATION  OF  FRIENDS, 

20  SOUTH  TWELFTH  STREET, 

PHILADELPHIA, 

1903. 


,7V/ 7*  3 


COPYRIGHTED 

BY  WII<I,IAM  EVERETT 

1900 


PRESS  OF 

THE   lyEEDS   &   BlDDLE   COMPANY 

1019-21  MARKET  STREET 
PHILADELPHIA 


ORATION. 


I  do  not  see  how  any  one  can  rise  on  this  occasion  with- 
out trembling.  It  has  been  illustrated  by  too  many  dis- 
tinguished names,  it  has  brought  forth  too  many  striking 
sentiments,  not  to  give  every  orator  the  certainty  that  he  will 
fall  short  of  its  traditions  and  the  fear  that  he  will  do  so 
disastrously.  But  of  one  thing  I  am  sure :  it  behooves  the 
speaker  to-day  to  be  candid.  No  elegant  or  inflated  com- 
monplaces, concealing  one's  real  sentiment  by  the  excuse 
of  academic  dignity  or  courtesy,  ought  to  sully  the  honesty 
with  which  brethren  speak  to  each  other.  The  first,  the 
only  aim,  of  every  university,  is  the  investigation  and  propa- 
gation of  truth, — truth  in  the  convictions  and  truth  in  the 
utterance. 

My  very  first  knowledge  of  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  dates 
back  to  early  childhood.  In  the  year  1846  I  was  present  at 
a  portion  of  the  Commencement  exercises,  when  the  parts 
were  sustained  by  Francis  James  Child,  George  Martin 
Lane,  Charles  Eliot  Norton  and  George  Frisbie  Hoar. 
Those  exercises  were  followed  by  a  Commencement  dinner, 
whose  good  cheer  proved  too  much  for  a  boy  not  yet  seven 
years  old.  It  was  a  dinner  at  home ;  no  one  ever  wanted  to 
eat  too  much  at  the  official  Commencement  dinner.  I  heard, 
therefore,  at  my  bedside,  the  next  day,  the  tale  of  Phi  Beta 
Kappa, — how  Charles  Sumner  had  held  his  audience  for 
two  hours,  relating  the  achievements  of  four  Harvard  grad- 
uates who  had  lately  died,  Pickering,  Story,  Allston  and 
Channing;  winding  up  with  the  magnificent  peroration, 
transferred,  I  believe,  from  an  earlier  address,  in  which  he 
appealed  so  earnestly  for  peace,  as  the  duty  of  our  time, 
and  answered  Burke's  lament  that  the  age  of  chivalry  had 


851092 


gone  by  the  declaration  that  the  age  of  humanity  had  come, 
that  the  coming  time  should  take  its  name  not  from  the 
horse,  but  from  man.  I  cannot  even  think  of  Phi  Beta  with- 
out these  names  and  these  thoughts  ringing  in  my  ears  and 
almost  dictating  my  words. 

It  seems  to  me  that  an  orator  can  hardly  go  wrong  if  he 
holds  fast  to  our  motto,  Philosophy  the  Guide,  or,  rather, 
the  Sailing  Master  of  Life.  There  is  little  doubt  that,  when 
this  motto  was  first  taken  by  a  secret  fraternity,  "veiled  in 
the  obscurity  of  a  learned  language,"  it  meant  that  philoso- 
phy which  rejects  revelation, — the  philosophy  of  the  ency- 
clopaedists of  France.  Accordingly,  when  the  veil  was 
taken  away  from  the  mystic  characters  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  it 
was  declared  that  philosophy  included  religion.  How  many 
who  accept  membership  in  it  to-day  direct  their  voyage  of 
life  by  philosophy  or  religion  either,  it  might  not  be  safe  to 
say.  It  cannot,  however,  be  wrong,  whatever  our  subject 
is,  to  steer  our  way  in  it  with  her  at  the  helm. 

I  am  not  going  to  plunge  into  a  discussion  of  what  philo- 
sophy means.  It  has  been  used  to  mean  many  things,  and 
to  some  it  means  nothing  at  all.  When  Wackford  Squeers, 
who  sixty  years  ago  we  all  knew  was  of  the  immortals  and 
who  is  now  in  danger  of  being  forgotten,  was  asked  by  any 
parent  a  question  in  some  occult  branch  of  study,  like  trigo- 
nometry, he  was  wont  to  answer,  "Sir,  are  you  a  philoso- 
pher?" And  to  the  invariable  negative  he  would  then  reply, 
"Ah !  then  I  can't  explain  it  to  you."  As  one  of  Wackford 
Squeers'  humblest  successors,  I  feel  there  is  something  not 
absurd  in  his  counter-question,  when  I  meet  what  are  called 
practical  men  discussing  what  they  call  the  practical  prob- 
lems of  life. 

He  who,  whether  decked  with  blue  and  pink  ribbons  or 
not,  steers  his  course  with  philosophy  as  his  guide,  ap- 
proaches all  life's  problems  in  another  temper  and  another 
spirit;  he  is  working  by  other  roads  to  other  ends,  than  he 
who  is  guided  by  the  passions  and  worships  the  idols  of  the 
hour.  Philosophy  has  different  meanings  for  different  men; 


but  the  gulf  is  boundless  between  those  who  accept  it  with 
any  meaning  and  those  who  know  it  not,  or  know  it  only  as 
an  object  of  patronage  or  scorn. 

The  philosopher  walks  by  principle,  not  merely  by  inter- 
est or  passion ;  by  the  past  and  the  future,  not  merely  by  the 
present;  by  the  unseen  and  the  eternal,  not  merely  by  the 
seen  and  temporal ;  by  law,  and  not  only  by  accident.  It  is 
not,  as  sometimes  fancied,  that  he  does  not  see  and,  seeing, 
does  not  heed  these  things.  He  does  not,  as  Plato  bids  him, 
turn  his  back  on  what  this  world  shows.  He  meets  im- 
mediate duties;  he  lives  with  contemporary  men;  he  deals 
with  existing  demands.  But  he  does  all  this  by  the  light  and 
guidance  of  rules  of  which  the  servant  of  time  and  place 
knows  nothing. 

I  claim  for  this  the  assent  of  all  my  brothers  here  as  an 
intellectual  fact ;  but  I  desire  at  the  outset  of  what  I  say  to 
rouse  your  thoughts  to  it  as  the  dictate  of  emotion  and  of 
conscience.  Philosophy,  the  study  of  causes  in  their  deepest 
effects,  beginning  with  the  true  use  of  terms  and  proceed- 
ing by  sound  reasoning,  has  the  power  to  transmute  and 
sanctify  the  most  commonplace  transactions,  the  most  hack- 
neyed words.  The  master  of  all  philosophy  began  his  work 
by  forcing  his  contemporaries  to  define  the  commonest  sub- 
jects of  conversation.  I  would,  as  his  follower,  ask  you  to 
apply  that  method  to  one  of  the  favorite  watchwords,  one 
of  the  pressing  duties  of  to-day,  and  see  if  philosophy  has 
not  something  to  define  and  correct  in  a  field  where  her 
sway  is  scarcely  admitted. 

You  cannot  talk  for  ten  minutes  on  any  of  what  are 
rightly  held  to  be  the  great  interests  of  life  without  feeling 
how  loosely  we  use  their  names.  We  seem  not  to  be  dealing 
with  sterling  coin,  which  has  the  same  value  everywhere  and 
always,  but  with  counters  that,  passing  with  a  conventional 
value  here  and  now,  are  worthless  when  we  come  to  some 
great  public  or  private  crisis.  Education,  business,  amuse- 
ment, art,  literature,  science,  home,  comfort,  society,  poli- 
tics, patriotism,  religion, — how  many  men  who  use  these 


words  have  any  true  conception  of  their  force  ?  How  many 
simply  mean  that  form  of  education,  that  line  of  business, 
that  sect  in  religion,  that  party  in  politics,  to  which  they  are 
accustomed?  How  many  are  led  by  this  loose  yet  limited 
use  of  words  into  equally  loose  and  equally  narrow  ways  of 
action?  How  many  need  a  Socrates  to  walk  through  the 
streets  and  force  them  to  define  their  terms?  And  how 
many,  if  he  did  appear  again,  would  be  ready  to  kill  him  for 
corrupting  the  youth,  and  holding  to  a  God  different  from 
those  the  country  worships? 

^  Patriotism, — love  of  country,  devotion  to  .the  kind  that 
i).Qre~.usrr — is  pressed  upon  us  now  as  paramount  to  every 
other  notion  in  its  claims  on  head,  hand  and  heart.  It  is 
pictured  to  us  not  merely  as  an  amiable  and  inspiring  emo- 
tion, but  as  a  paramount  duty,  which  is  to  sweep  every 
other  out  of  the  way.  The  thought  cannot  be  put  in  loftier 
or  more  comprehensive  words  than  by  Cicero:  Carl  snnt 
parent cs,  cari  libcri,  can  fainiliarcs,  propinqui;  scd  omncs 
omnium  caritates  una  patria  complcxa  cst.  "Dear  are  par- 
ents, dear  are  children,  dear  are  friends  and  relations ;  but 
all  affections  to  all  men  are  embraced  in  country  alone." 
The  Greek,  the  Roman,  the  Frenchman,  the  German,  talks 
about  "fatherland ;"  and  we  are  beginning  to  copy  them, 
though  to  my  ear  the  English  "mother  country"  is  far  more 
tender  and  true. 

Cicero  follows  up  his  words  by  saying  that  for  her  no 
true  son  would,  if  need  be,  hesitate  to  die.  And  his  words, 
themselves  an  echo  of  what  the  poets  and  orators  whose 
heir  he  was  had  repeated  again  and  again,  have  been  re- 
echoed and  reiterated  in  many  ages  since  he  bowed  his  neck 
to  the  sword  of  his  country's  enemy. 

Hut  to  give  life  for  their  country  is  the  least  part  of  what 
rnen  have  been  willing  to  do  for  her.  Human  life  has  often 
seemed  a  very  trifling  possession,  to  be  exposed  cheaply  in 
all  sorts  of  useless  risks  and  feuds.  It  has  been  the  cheerful 
sacrifice  of  the  things  that  make  life  worth  living,  the  eager 
endurance  of  things  far  worse  than  death,  which  show  the 


mighty  power  which  love  of  country  holds  over  the  entire 
being"  of  man.  Wealth  that  Croesus  might  have  envied  has 
been  poured  at  the  feet  of  our  mother,  and  sacrifices  taken 
up  which  Saint  Francis  never  knew.  Ease  and  luxury,  re- 
fined company  and  cultivated  employment,  have  been  re- 
jected for  the  hardships  and  suffering  of  the  camp;  the  sym- 
pathy and  idolatry  of  home  have  been  abandoned  for  the 
tenfold  hardships  and  sufferings  of  a  political  career;  and, 
at  the  age  when  we  can  offer  neither  life  nor  living  as  of  any 
;'  value  to  one's  country,  those  children  and  grandchildren 
,  which  were  to  have  been  the  old  man's  and  the  old  woman's 
solace  are  freely  sent  forth  in  the  cause  of  the  country, 
which  will  send  back  nothing  but  a  sword  and  cap  to  be 
\  hung  on  the  wall  and  never  be  worn  by  living  man  again. 
_Such  are  the  sacrifices  men  have  cheerfully  made  fprjtjje 
existence,  the  honor,  the  prosperity  of  their  country.  But 
perhaps  the  power  of  patriotism  is  shown  more  strongly  in 
what  it  makes  them  do  than  in  what  it  makes  them  give  up. 
You  know  how  many  men  have  been,  as  it  were,  born  again 
by  the  thought  that  they  might  illustrate  the  name  and  swell 
the  force  of  their  country,  achieving  what  they  never  would 
have  aroused  themselves  to  do  for  themselves  alone.  I  do 
riot  mean  the  feats  of  military  courage  and  strategy,  which 
are  generally  talked  of  as  the  sum  of  patriotic  endeavor.  I 
recollect  in  our  w7ar  being  told  by  a  very  well-known  soldier, 
who  is  now  a  very  well-known  civilian,  that  it  was  conceited 
for  me  or  any  other  man  to  think  that  in  time  of  war  he 
could  serve  his  country  in  any  way  but  in  the  ranks.  But. 
in  fact,  every  art  and  every  science  has  won  triumphs  under 
the  stress  of  patriotism  that  it  has  hardly  known  in  less 
enthusiastic  days.  The  glory  that  runs  through  every  line  of 
Sophocles  and  Virgil,  as  they  sung  the  glories  of  Athens  and 
Rome,  is  reflected  in  the  song  of  our  own  bards  from 
Spenser  and  Shakespeare  to  this  hour ;  the  rush  and  sweep 
of  Demosthenes  and  Cicero,  dwelling  on  the  triumphs  and 
duties  of  their  native  lands,  are  only  the  harbingers  of  Burke 
and  Webster  on  the  like  themes ;  the  beauty  into  which  Bra- 


8 

mante  and  Angelo  poured  all  their  souls  to  adorn  their 
beloved  Florence  was  lavished  under  no  other  impulse  than 
that  which  set  all  the  science  of  France  working  to  relieve 
her  agriculture  and  manufactures  from  the  pressure  laid 
upon  her  by  the  strange  vicissitudes  of  her  Revolution. 

Not  all  this  enthusiasm  has  succeeded :  there  have  been 
patriotic  blunders  as  well  as  patriotic  triumphs;  but  still  it 
stands  truq  that  men  are  spurred  on  to  make  the  best  of 
themselves  in  the  days  when  love  of  country  glowed  strong- 
est in  their  hearts.  It  would  seem  as  if  all  citizens  poured 
their  individual  affections  and  devotions  into  one  Superior 
Lake,  from  which  they  all  burst  in  one  Niagara  of  patriot- 
ism. 

I  am  ashamed,  however,  to  press  such  a  commonplace 
proposition  before  this  audience  and  in  this  place,  where  the 
walls  are  as  redolent  of  love  of  country  as  Faneuil  Hall 
itself.  The  question  is  if  philosophy,  our  chosen  guide  of 
life,  has  anything  to  say  of  this  same  love  of  country, — if 
she  brings  that  under  her  rule,  as  she  does  so  much  else  of 
life,  supplementing,  curtailing,  correcting, — or  whether 
patriotism  may  bid  defiance  to  philosophy,  claiming  her  sub- 
mission as  she  claims  the  submission  of  every  other  human 
interest,  and  bidding  her  yield  and  be  absorbed,  or  stand  off 
and  depart  to  her  visionary  Utopia,  where  the  claims  of 
practical  duty  and  natural  sentiment  do  not  seek  to  follow 
her. 

^For,  indeed,  we  are  told  now  that  patriotism  is  not  merely 
a  generous  and  laudable  emotion,  but  a  paramount  and  over- 
whelming duty,  to  which  everything  else  which  men  have 
called  duties  must  give  way.  If  a  monarch,  a  statesman,  a 
soldier,  stands  forth  pre-eminent  in  exalting  the  name  or 
spreading  the  bounds  of  his  country,  he  is  a  patriot;  and 
that  is  enough.) 

'^  /Such  a  leader  may  be  as  perjured  and  blasphemous  as 

(    Frederic,  or  as  brutal  and  stupid  as  his  father ;  he  may  be  as 

\  faithless  and  mean  as  Maryborough,  or  as  dissolute  and 

<  bloody  as  Julius  Caesar ;  he  may  trample  on  every  right  of 


independent  nations  and  drive  his  countrymen  to  the  sham- 
bles like  Napoleon ;  he  may  be  as  corrupt  as  Walpole  and  as 
wayward  as  Chatham;  he  may  be  destitute  of  every  spark 
of  culture  or  may  prostitute  the  gifts  of  the  Muses  to  the 
basest  ends;  he  may  have,  in  short,  all  manner  of  vices, 
crimes,  or  defects. '  But,  if  he  is  true  to  his  country,  if  he  is 
her  faithful  standard-bearer,  if  he  strives  to  set  and  keep 
her  high  above  her  rivals,  he  is  right,  a  worthy  patriot.)  And, 
if  he  seems  lukewarm  in  her  cause,  if,  however  wise  and 
good  and  accomplished  he  may  be  in  all  other  relations,  he 
fails  to  work  with  all  his  heart  and  soul  to  maintain  her 
position  among  the  nations,  he  must  be  stamped  with  fail- 
ure, if  not  with  curse. 

For  the  plain  citizen,  who  does  not  claim  to  be  a  leader 
in  peace  or  war,  the  duty  is  still  clearer.  He  must  stand  by  \  > 
his  country,  according  to  what  those  who  have  her  destiny 
in  their  control  decide  is  her  proper  course.  In  war  or  in 
peace,  he  is  to  have  but  one  watchword.  In  peace,  indeed, 
his  patriotic  duty  will  chiefly  be  shown  by  obeying  existing 
laws,  wherever  they  may  strike,  even  as  Socrates  rejected 
all  thought  of  evading  the  unjust,  stupid,  and  malignant 
sentence  that  took  his  life.  But  it  is  not  thought  incon- 
sistent with  that  true  love  of  country  to  let  one's  opinions 
be  known  about  those  laws,  and  about  the  good  of  the  coun- 
try in  general,  in  time  of  peace.  In  a  free  land  like  ours, 
every  citizen  is  expected  to  be  ready  with  voice  and  vote  to 
do  his  part  in  correcting  what  is  amiss,  in  protesting  against 
bad  laws,  and,  as  far  as  he  may,  defeating  bad  men  whom  he 
believes  to  be  seeking  his  country's  ruin.  Nay,  a  citizen  of 
a  free  country  who  did  not  so  criticise  would  be  held  to  be 
derelict  to  that  highest  duty  which  free  lands,  differing  from 
slavish  despotisms,  impose  upon  their  sons. 

But  in  time  of  war  we  are  told  that  all  this  is  changed. 
As  soon  as  our  country  is  arrayed  against  another  under 
arms,  every  loyal  son  has  nothing  to  do  but  to  support  her 
armies  to  victory.  He  may  desire  peace;  but  it  must  be 
"peace  with  honor,"  whatever  that  phrase  of  the  greatest 


10 

charlatan  of  modern  times  may  mean.  He  must  not  ques- 
tion the  justice  or  the  expediency  of  the  war ;  he  must  either 
fight  himself  or  encourage  others  to  fight.  Criticism  of  the 
management  of  the  war  may  be  allowable;  of  the  fact  of 
the  war,  it  is  treason.  And  the  word  for  the  patriot  is,  "Our 
country,  right  or  wrong."  ) 

Right  here,  then,  as  I  conceive  it,  philosophy  raises  her 
warning  finger  before  the  passionate  enthusiast,  and  says, 
"Hold!*'  in  the  name  of  higher  thought,  of  deeper  law,  of 
more  serious  principle,  to  which  every  man  here,  every  child 
of  Harvard,  every  brother  of  this  society,  is  bound  to  listen. 
Philosophy  says,  "Hold !"  with  the  terror  of  the  voice  with- 
in, with  the  majesty  of  the  voice  from  above,  to  Americans 
now;  and,  with  the  spirit  of  Socrates  returning  to  earth,  it 
bids  them  know  what  they  mean  by  the  words  they  use,  or 
they  may  be  crowning  as  a  lofty  emotion  that  which  is  only 
an  unreasoning  passion,  and  clothing  with  the  robes  of  duty 
what  is  only  a  superstition.  This  love  o£  countryi_thisjpa- 
triotic  ardor  "f  onr^  ™"g*  .submit  to  have  philosophy  m-. 
vest  igateher^cl  aims  to  rule  ab^ve  all  oth^L^Hl^ii^I!-^  not  in 
the  interest  ofl_ajiyLj£ss--^nerous--em<>tion,4:K)t4o  make  men 
more  sordid  or  selfish,  but  simply  because  there  is  a  rule 
called  Tj^j±uaad--ar-measui;€  called  Right^-bjLJW-hich  -ev-e*y- 
human  action  is  bound  tn  be  gauged. — because,  though  all 
gods  and  men  and  fiends  should  league  all  their  forces,  and 
link  the  golden  chain  to  Olympus  to  draw  its  glory  down  to 
their  purposes,  they  will  only  find  themselves  drawn  up- 
wards, subject  to  its  unchanging  laws,  the  weak  members 
hanging  in  the  air  and  the  vile  ones  hurled  down  to  Tar- 
tarus. 

4  What  is  this  country — this  mother  country,  this  father- 
land, that  we  are  bidden  to  love  and  serve  and  stand  by  at 
any  risk  and  sacrifice?  Is  it  the  soil?  the  land?  the  plains 
and  mountains  and  rivers  ?  the  fields  and  forests  and  mines  ? 
No  doubt  there  is  inspiration  from  this  very  earth,  from 
that  part  of  the  globe  which  our  nation  holds,  and  which  we 
call  our  country.  Poets  and  orators  have  dwelt  again  and 


II 

again  on  the  undying  attractions  of  our  own  land,  no  mat- 
ter what  it  is  like, — the  Dutch  marshes,  the  Swiss  moun- 
tains, soft  Italy,  and  stern  Spain,  equally  clutching  on  the 
hearts  of  their  people  with  a  resistless  chain.  ( But  a  land  is 
nothing  without  the  men.  The  very  same  countries  whose 
scenery,  tame  or  bold,  charming  or  awful,  has  been  the  in- 
spiration to  gallant  generations,  may,  as  the  wheel  of  time 
turns,  fall  to  indolent  savages,  listless  slaves,  or  sordid 
money-getters.  Byron  has  told  us  this  in  lines  which  the 
men  of  his  own  time  felt  were  instinct  with  creative  genius, 
but  which  the  taste  of  the  day  rejects  for  distorted  thoughts 
in  distorted  verse: — 

"  Clime  of  the  unforgotten  brave  ! 
Whose  land,  from  plain  to  mountain  cave, 
Was  Freedom's  home  or  Glory's  grave  ! 
Shrine  of  the  mighty  !  can  it  be 
That  this  is  all  remains  of  thee  ? 
Approach,  thou  craven,  crouching  slave  ! 

Say,  is  not  this  Thermopylae  ? 
These  waters  blue,  that  round  you  lave, 

O  servile  offspring  of  the  free, — 
Pronounce  what  sea,  what  shore  is  this  ? 

The  gulf,  the  rock  of  Salamis  ! 

"  '  Twere  long  to  tell  and  sad  to  trace 
Each  step  from  splendor  to  disgrace. 
Enough,  no  foreign  foe  could  quell 
Thy  soul  till  from  itself  it  fell ! 
Yes  :  self-abasement  paved  a  way 
To  villian  bonds  and  despot  sway." 

(It  is  the  nation,  not  the  land,  which  makes  the  patriot.  If 
the  nation  degenerate,  the  land  becomes  only  a  monument, 
not  a  dwelling.)  Let  the  nation  rouse  itself,  and  the  country 
may  be  a  palace  and  a  temple  once  more. 

But  who  are  the  men  that  make  the  nation?  Are  they 
the  whole  of  the  population  or  a  part  only?  Are  they  one 
party  only  among  the  people,  which  is  ready  perhaps  to 
regard  the  other  party  not  as  countrymen,  but  as  aliens? 
Is  the  country  the  men  who  govern  her  and  control  her 
destinies, — the  king,  the  nobles,  the  popular  representatives, 
the  delegates  to  whom  power  is  transmitted  when  the  peo- 


12 


pie  resign  it  J-  Once  the  king  was  the  nation,  with  perhaps 
a  few  counsellors  ;  patriotism  meant  loyalty  to  the  sovereign. 
Every  man  who  on  any  pretext  arrayed  himself  against  the 
crown  was  a  disloyal  rebel,  an  unpatriotic  traitor,  until  at 
length  God  for  His  own  purposes  saw  fit  to  array  Charles  I. 
against  the  people  of  England,  when,  after  years  of  civil 
war,  and  twice  as  many  years  of  hollow  peace,  and  five 
times  as  many  years  when  discussion  was  stifled  or  put 
aside,  the  world  came  to  recognize  that  loyalty  to  one's  king 
and  love  to  one's  country  are  as  different  in  their  nature  as 
the  light  of  a  lamp  and  the  light  of  the  sun. 

'  And  yet,  if  a  king  understands  the  spirit  and  heart  of  his 
nation,  he  may  lead  it  so  truly  in  peace  or  in  war  that  love 
of  country  shall  be  inseparable  from  devotion  to  the  sov- 
ereign. )  Modern  historians  may  load  their  pages  as  they 
please  with  revelations  of  the  meanness,  the  falsehood,  the 
waywardness  of  Queen  Elizabeth;  yet  England  believed  in 
her  and  loved  her,  and  if  England  rose  from  ruin  to  pros- 
perity in  her  time,  it  was  because  her  people  trusted  her. 
In  her  day,  as  for  two  centuries  before,  Scotland,  where 
three  different  races  had  been  welded  together  by  Bruce  to- 
produce  the  most  patriotic  of  peoples,  had  scarcely  a  true 
national  existence,  certainly  nothing  that  men  could  cling 
to  with  affection  and  pride,  because  kings  and  commons 
were  alike  the  prey  of  a  poor,  proud,  selfish  nobility,  who 
suffered  nobody  to  rule,  scarcely  to  live,  but  themselves  ;  ex- 
empting themselves  from  the  laws  which  they  forced  upon 
their  country. 

(.  An  American  cries  out  at  the  idea  of  a  limited  aristocracy, 
seeking  to  drag  the  force  and  affection  of  a  nation  of  vas- 
sals, and  calling  that  patriotism.  Then  what  will  he  say 
to  the  patriotism  of  some  of  those  lands  which  have  made 
their  national  name  ring  through  the  world  for  the  triumphs 
and  the  sacrifices  of  which  it  is  the  emblem?)  What  was 
Sparta?  What  was  Venice?  What  was  Bern?  What  was 
Poland?  Merely  the  fields  where  the  most  exclusive  aris- 
tocracies won  name  and  fame  and  wealth  and  territory  only 


13 

to  sink  their  unrecognized  subject  citizens  lower  every  year 
in  the  scale  of  true  nationality.  Not  one  of  these  identified 
the  nation  with  the  people.  /  Or  does  an  American  insist  on  a 
democracy,  where  the  entire  people's  voice  speaks  through 
rulers  of  its  choosing?  Does  he  prefer  the  patriotism  of 
Athens,  where  thirty  thousand  democrats  kept  up  an  inter- 
minable feud  with  ten  thousand  conservatives,  one  ever 
plunging  the  city  into  rash  expeditions,  the  other,  as  soon  as 
its  wealth  gave  it  the  upper  hand,  disfranchising,  exiling, 
killing  the  majority  of  the  people,  because  it  could  hire 
stronger  arms  to  crush  superior  numbers?  What  was  the 
patriotism  of  the  Italian  cities  when  faction  alternately  ban- 
ished faction,  when  Dante  suffered  no  more  than  he  would 
have  inflicted  had  his  side  got  the  upper  hand?  What  was 
the  patriotism  of  either  Greece  or  Italy,  which  confined  it- 
self to  its  own  city,  and  where  city  enjoyed  far  more  fight- 
ing against  city  than  ever  thinking  of  union  to  save  the 
common  race  from  bondage?  For  years,  for  centuries,  for 
ages,  the  nations  that  would  most  eagerly  repeat  such  senti- 
ments as  Cicero's  about  love  of  country  never  dreamed  of 
using  the  word  in  any  sense  that  a  philosopher, — nay,  that 
a  plain,  truth-telling  man, — could  not  convict  at  once  of 
meanness  and  contradiction. 

But  we  of  modern  times  look  back  with  pity  and  contempt 
on  those  benighted  ages  which  had  not  discovered  the  great 
arcanum  of  representative  government,  whereby  a  free  na- 
tion chooses  the  men  to  whom  it  entrusts  its  concerns, — 
its  presidents  and  its  prime  ministers,  its  parliaments  and 
congresses  and  courts.  Yet  even  this  mighty  discovery, 
whereby  modern  nations  are  raised  so  far  above  those  poor 
Old  World  creatures,  the  Greeks  and  Romans  and  me- 
diaeval Italians,  has  not  so  far  controlled  factional  passion 
that  many  countries  do  not  live  in  a  perpetual  civil  war 
which  Athens  and  Corinth  would  have  been  ashamed  ofJ  We 
all  know  how  our  dear  sister  republics  of  Central  and  South- 
ern America,  which,  as  Mr.  Webster  said,  looked  to  the 
great  Northern  Light  in  forming  their  constitutions,  treat 


their  elections  as  merely  indications  which  of  two  parties 
shall  be  set  up  to  be  knocked  down  by  rifles  and  bombshells 
unless  it  retains  its  hold  by  such  means.  But  how  with  our- 
selves? How  with  England?  How  with  France?  How 
often  do  we  regard  our  elected  governors  as  really  standing 
for  the  whole  nation  and  deserving  its  allegiance? 

In  1846  the  President  of  the  United  States  and  his  coun- 
sellors hurried  us  into  a  needless,  a  bullying,  a  wicked  war. 
Fully  a  quarter  of  the  country  felt  it  was  an  outrage,  and 
nothing  else.  But  appeals  were  made  to  stand  by  the  gov- 
ernment, against  which  our  own  merciless  satirist  directed 
the  lines  which  must  have  forever  tingled  in  the  ears  and 
the  consciences  of  the  men  who  supported  what  they  knew 
was  irretrievably  wicked  : — 

"  The  side  of  our  country  must  allus  be  took, 

And  President  Polk,  you  know,  he  is  our  country  ; 
And  the  angel  who  writes  all  our  sins  in  a  book 
Puts  the  debit  to  him  and  to  us  the  percontry." 

No,  brethren !  no  president,  no  prime  minister,  no  cabinet, 
no  congress,  or  parliament,  no  deftly  organized  representa- 
tive or  executive  body,  is  or  can  be  our  country.  To  pay 
them  a  patriot's  affectionate  allegiance  is  as  illogical  as 
loyalty  to  James  II.  or  to  the  French  National  Convention. 
Mere  obedience  to  law,  when  duly  enacted,  is  one  thing :  So- 
crates may  drink  the  hemlock  rather  than  run  away  from 
the  doom  to  which  a  court  of  his  native  city  has  consigned 
him;  but,  when  the  tribunals  of  that  country  perpetrated 
such  mockery  of  justice,  Plato  and  Xenophon  were  right  in 
cherishing  to  their  dying  day  a  poignant  sense  of  outrage, 
an  implacable  grudge,  against  such  a  step-mother  as  blood- 
stained Athens. 

But  sometimes  the  voice  of  the  whole  people  speaks  un- 
mistakably ;  its  ruler  is  the  true  agent  and  representative  of 
a  united  and  determined  people.  The  will  of  the  nation  is 
unquestioned.  Who  are  you,  who  am  I,  that  we  should  dis- 
pute it,  and  think  ourselves  wiser  and  better  than  all  our 
countrymen  ?  Is  not  the  whole  nation  the  mother,  whom  to 


15 

disobey  is  the  highest  sin?  No,  the  particular  set  of  men 
who  make  up  the  nation  at  any  time  will  die  and  pass  away, 
and  what  will  their  sons  think  of  what  they  made  their 
country  do? 

In  1854  the  Emperor  Nicholas,  whose  thoughts  were 
never  far  from  Constantinople,  picked  an  unintelligible 
quarrel  with  the  sultan  of  Turkey.  The  unprincipled  ad- 
venturer, who  contrived  to  add  new  stains  to  the  name  of 
Napoleon  Bonaparte,  saw  his  chance  to  win  glory  for  the 
Gallic  eagle.  He  plunged  into  war,  and  entrapped  England 
into  it  with  him.  The  wise  old  statesman  who  was  at  the 
head  of  the  English  government  knew  the  war  was  need- 
less and  wrong.  He  did  his  utmost  to  stop  it ;  but  his  coun- 
trymen preferred  to  listen  to  the  reckless  Palmerston,  and 
they  lashed  first  themselves  and  then  Aberdeen  into  war. 
The  whole  nation  went  mad.  John  Bright  told  them  the 
philosophic,  the  political,  the  Christian  truth;  and  Palmer- 
ston insulted  him  on  the  floor  of  the  House  of  Commons. 
Two  years  were  consumed  in  the  costly  and  pestilential  siege 
of  Sebastopol.  A  hollow  peace  was  patched  up,  of  which 
the  only  significant  article  was,  after  a  short  interval,  im- 
pudently broken  by  Russia ;  the  unspeakable  Turk  was  given 
another  thirty  years'  lease  of  life.  And  now  I  do  not  be- 
lieve there  is  one  grown  man  in  England  among  the  sons 
and  grandsons  of  those  who  fought  the  Crimean  War  who 
does  not  believe  Aberdeen  and  Bright  were  right,  that  Palm- 
erston and  England  were  wrong,  and  that  the  war  was  a 
national  blunder,  a  national  sin,  a  national  crime.  When 
John  Bright  stood  almost  against  the  whole  nation,  he  was 
neither  self -conceited  nor  unpatriotic,  but  a  great  and  good 
man  speaking  as  the  prophet  of  God. 

Yes,  a  whole  people  may  be  wrong,  and  deserve,  at  best, 
the  pity  of  a  real  patriot  rather  than  his  active  love.  Our 
country  is  something  more  than  the  single  procession  which 
passes  across  its  borders  in  one  generation:  it  means  the 
land  with  all  its  people  in  all  their  periods;  the  ancestors 
whose  exertions  made  us  what  we  are,  and  whose  memory  is 


i6 

precious  to  us;  the  posterity  to  whom  we  are  to  transmit 
what  we  prize,  unstained,  as  we  received  it.  And  he  who 
loves  his  country  truly  and  serves  her  rightly  must  act  and 
speak,  not  for  the  present  generation  alone,  but  for  all  that 
rightly  live,  every  event  in  whose  history  is  inseparable  from 
every  other.  If  we  pray,  as  does  the  seal  of  Boston,  that 
"God  will  be  to  us  as  he  was  to  the  fathers,"  then  we  must 
be  to  God  what  our  fathers  were. 

But,  after  philosophy  has  forced  the  vociferous  patriot  to 
define  what  he  means  by  his  country,  she  has  a  yet  more 
searching  question  to  ask :  What  will  you  do  and  what  will 
you  suffer  for  this  country  you  love  ?  How  shall  your  love 
be  shown?  There  is  one  of  the  old  Greek  maxims  which 
says  in  four  words  of  that  divine  language  what  a  modern 
tongue  can  scarcely  stammer  in  four  times  four :  "Sparta  is 
thine  allotted  home ;  make  her  a  home  of  order  and  beauty." 
Whatever  our  country  needs  to  make  her  perfect,  that  she 
calls  on  us  to  do.  I  have  run  over  to  you  some  of  the  great 
sacrifices  and  great  exertions  which  patriots  have  made  to 
make  their  dear  home  perfect,  and  themselves  perfect  for 
her  sake.  But  everything  done  or  renounced  to  make  her 
perfect  must  recognize  that  she  is  not  perfect  yet ;  and  what 
our  country  chiefly  calls  on  us  for  is  not  mighty  exertions 
and  sacrifices,  but  those  particular  ones,  small  or  great,  which 
^ shall  do  her  real  good,  and  not  harm. ;  That  her  commerce 
should  whiten  every  sea;  that  her  soil  should  yield  freely 
vegetable  and  mineral  wealth ;  that  she  should  be  dotted 
with  peaceful  homes,  the  abode  of  virtue  and  love ;  that  her 
cities  should  be  adorned  with  all  that  is  glorious  in  art ;  that 
famine  and  poverty  and  plague  and  crime  should  be  fought 
with  all  the  united  energy  of  head  and  hand  and  heart ;  that 
historians  and  poets  and  orators  should  continue  to  make 
her  high  achievements  and  mighty  aims  known  to  all  her 
children  and  to  the  world ;  that  the  oppressed  of  every  land 
may  find  a  refuge  within  her  borders;  that  she  may  stand 
before  her  sister  nations  indeed  a  sister,  loved  and  honored, 
— these  are  the  commonplaces,  tedious,  if  noble  to  recount, 


17 

of  what  patriotism  has  sought  to  do  in  many  ages.  Yet  in 
every  one  of  these  things,  when  actually  achieved,  there  has 
often  been  a  worm  at  the  core  of  the  showy  fruit,  which  has 
made  their  mighty  authors  but  little  better  than  magnificent 
traitors. 

For  every  one  of  these  has  often  been  achieved  at  the  ex- 
pense of  other  nations  as  ancient,  as  glorious,  as  dear  to 
their  own  children,  as  worthy  of  patriotic  love  as  their  tri- 
umphant antagonist;  and  every  one  has  been  achieved  at 
the  still  worse  price  of  corruption  and  tyranny  at  home. 
Every  country  has  in  times  mistaken  material  for  moral 
wealth  and  has  grown  corrupt  as  she  grew  great ;  and  every 
country  in  time  has  fancied  that  she  could  not  be  great  and 
honored  while  her  sisters  were  great  and  honored  too,  and 
has  gone  to  war  with  them,  hoping  to  enlarge  her  borders  at 
their  expense  and  to  gain  by  their  loss.  ( It  is  here,  again,  at 
this  very  point  that  the  philosopher  calls  upon  the  patriot  to 
say  what  he  means  by  his  cry,  "Our  country,  right  or 
wrong,"  the  maxim  of  one  who  threw  away  an  illustrious 
life  in  that  worst  of  wicked  encounters,  a  duel.  If  there 
are  such  words  as  right  and  wrong,  and  those  words  stand 
for  eternal  realities,  why  shall  not  a  nation,  why  shall  not 
her  loving  sons,  be  made  to  bow  to  the  same  law, — the  utter- 
ance of  God  in  history  and  in  the  heart  ?  Can  a  king,  can  a 
president,  can  a  congress,  can  a  whole  nation,  by  its  pride 
or  its  passions,  turn  wrong  into  right,  or  what  authority 
have  they  to  trifle  or  shuffle  with  either  ?  ) 

We  are  told  that,  if  we  ever  find  ourselves  at  war  with 
another  country,  no  matter  how  that  war  was  brought  on, 
no  matter  what  folly  or  wickedness  broke  the  peace,  no  mat- 
ter how  completely  we  might  oppose  and  deprecate  it  up  to 
the  moment  of  its  outbreak,  no  matter  how  as  truthful  his- 
orians  we  may  condemn  it  after  it  is  over,  no  matter  how 
iniquitous  or  tyrannical  our  sense  and  our  conscience  tell  us 
are  terms  on  which  peace  has  been  obtained,  we  ought, 
during  the  war,  to  be  heartily  and  avowedly  for  it.  "We 
must  not  desert  the  flag."  Patriotism  demands  that  we 


18 

should  always  stand  by  our  country  as  against  any  other. 

And  what  are  the  patriots  in  our  rival  country  to  be  doing 
the  while  ?  Are  they  to  support  the  war  against  us,  whether 
they  think  it  right  or  wrong?  Are  they  cheerfully  to  pay 
all  taxes?  Are  they  to  volunteer  for  every  battle?  Are 
they  to  carry  on  war  to  the  knife  or  the  last  ditch?  Is  their 
love  for  their  country  to  be  as  unreasoning,  as  purely  a  mat- 
ter of  emotion,  as  ours?  Certainly,  if  the  doctrine  of  indis- 
criminate patriotism,  "Our  country,  right  or  wrong,"  is  the 
true  one.^  If  France  and  Germany  fight,  no  matter  what  the 
cause,  every  Frenchman  must  desire  to  see  Germany  humili- 
ated, and  every  German  to  see  France  brought  to  her  knees ; 
and  it  is  absolutely  their  duty  to  have  all  cognizance  of  right 
and  wrong  swallowed  up  in  passionate  loyalty./  Lord  Aber- 
deen and  Mr.  Bright  were  right  in  deprecating  the  Crimean 
War  up  to  the  moment  of  its  declaration :  history  says  they 
were  right  now ;  but,  while  the  war  lasted,  it  was  their  duty 
to  sacrifice  their  sense  of  right  to  help  the  government  aims. 
Mr.  Webster  and  Mr.  Clay  were  right  in  pouring  out  their 
most  scathing  eloquence  against  the  Mexican  War :  Gen- 
eral Grant  was  right  in  recording  in  his  memoirs  that  he 
believed  it  unjust  and  unnecessary;  yet  Mr.  Webster  and 
Mr.  Clay  only  fulfilled. patriotic  duty  in  sending  their  sons  to 
die,  one  by  the  sword  and  one  by  the  fever,  in  the  same  army 
where  Grant  did  his  duty  by  fighting  against  his  conception 
of  right. 

Brethren,  I  call  this  sentimental  nonsense.  It  cannot  be 
patriotic  duty  to  say,  up  to  1846,  that  our  country  will  be 
wrong  if  she  fights,  to  say  after  1849  that  she  was  wrong 
in  fighting,  but  to  hold  one's  tongue  and  maintain  her  so- 
called  cause  in  1847  an<^  J848,  though  we  know  it  is  wrong 
all  along.  And,  observe,  these  patriots  make  no  distinction 
between  wars  offensive  and  defensive,  wars  for  aggression 
and  conquest  and  wars  for  national  existence.  )  In  any  war, 
in  all  wars  in  which  our  country  gets  engaged,  we  must  sup- 
port her :  her  honor  demands  that  we  shall  not  back  out. 

O  Honor!  that  terrible  word,  the  very  opposite  of  duty, 


19 

—unknown  in  that  sense  to  the  soldiers,  the  statesmen,  the 
patriots  of  Greece  and  Rome !  Honor,  the  invention  of  the 
Gothic  barbarians,  which,  more  than  any  other  one  thing, 
has  reduced  poor  Spain  to  her  present  low  estate!  There 
was  a  time  when  individual  men  talked  about  their  honor, 
and  stood  up  to  be  stabbed  and  shot  at,  whether  right  or 
wrong,  to  vindicate  it.  That  infernal  fiction,  the  honor  of 
the  duel,  was  on  the  point,  sixty  years  ago,  of  drawing  Ma- 
caulay  into  the  field  in  defence  of  a  few  sarcastic  paragraphs 
in  a  review,  which,  he  admitted  himself,  were  not  to  be  jus- 
tified. It  was  very  shortly  after  that  that  Prince  Albert 
came  to  England,  with  his  earnest,  simple,  modest  charac- 
ter. He  used  all  his  influence  to  stop  the  practice  and  the 
very  idea  of  duelling.  And  now  all  England  recognizes  that 
any  and  every  duel  is  a  sin,  a  crime,  and  a  folly,  and  that 
the  code  of  honor  has  no  defence  before  God  or  man.  When 
shall  the  day  come  when  the  nations  feel  the  same  about 
public  war?  When  shall  the  words  of  our  own  poet  find 
their  true  and  deserved  acceptance,  not  as  poetical  rhapsody, 
but  as  practical  truth  ?— 

"  Were  half  the  power  that  fills  the  world  with  terror, 

Were  half  the  wealth  bestowed  on  camps  and  courts, 
Given  to  redeem  the  human  mind  from  error, 
There  were  no  need  of  arsenals  and  forts. 

"  The  warrior's  name  should  be  a  name  abhorred  ; 

And  every  nation  that  should  lift  again 
Its  hand  against  its  brother,  on  its  forehead 
Should  bear  forevermore  the  curse  of  Cain." 

Brethren,  if  there  is  anything  of  which  philosophy  must 
say  it  is  wrong,  that  thing  is  war.  I  do  not  mean  any  par- 
ticular school  of  philosophy,  ancient  or  modern.  But  I 
mean,  if  any  one  studies  the  nature  of  God  and  man  in  the 
light  of  history,  with  a  view  to  draw  from  that  study  rules 
of  sound  thought  and  maxims  of  right  action,  he  must  say 
war  is  wrong,  an  antiquated,  blundering,  criminal  means  of 
solving  a  national  doubt  by  accepting  the  certainty  of  misery. 
I  began  my  address  with  Cicero's  definition  of  patriotism. 
I  now  recall  to  you  his  sentence  wrung  from  the  heart  of 


20 

a  man  who  had  blazoned  with  his  eloquence  the  fame  of 
many  great  soldiers,  and  was  not  even  himself  without 
a  spark  of  military  ambition,  when  he  found  his  fellow- 
citizens  bent  on  war  which  must  be  fatal  and  could  not  be 
glorious :  Quid  ego  praetefmisi  out  monitorum  aut  quer el- 
arum,  cum  vcl  iniqnissimam  pacem  justissimo  bello  ante- 
]  err  cm?  "What  did  I  omit  in  the  way  of  warning  and  wail- 
ing, preferring  as  I  did  the  most  unfair  peace  to  the  justest 
war?"  Granting — as  I  do  not — that  war  is  sometimes  nec- 
essary, so  cutting  off  a  man's  leg  or  extirpating  an  organ 
may  be  necessary;  but  it  is  always  a  horrible  thing  all  the 
same.  And  just  as  the  conservative  surgery  of  our  age  is  at 
work  day  and  night  to  avoid  these  destructive  operations, 
so  the  statesmanship  of  the  day  ought  to  be  at  work,  not 
specifically  to  secure  arbitration,  as  if  that  was  any  thing  more 
than  a  possible  method,  but  to  stop  war,  as  an  eternal  shame. 
And  granting  war  is  sometimes  necessary,  if  it  is  ever  en- 
gaged in  for  any  cause  less  than  necessary,  it  is  wrong ;  and 
the  country  is  wrong  that  engages  in  it.'  A  doubtful  war, 
a  war  about  which  opinions  are  divided,  is  for  that  very 
reason  not  doubtfully  evil;  and  the  country  that  makes  it 
is  wrong.  Yes,  brethren,  a  nation  may  be  in  the  wrong :  in 
every  war  one  nation  must  be  in  the  wrong,  and  generally 
both  are ;  and'if  any  country,  yours  or  mine,  is  in  the  wrong. 
it  is  our  duty  as  patriots  to  say  so,  and  not  support  the  coun- 
try we  love  in  a  wrong,  because  our  countrymen  have  in- 
volved her  in  it.  In  the  war  of  our  Revolution,  when  Lord 
North  had  the  king  and  virtually  the  country  with  him,  Fox 
lamented  that  Howe  had  won  the  battle  of  Long  Island,  and 
wished  he  had  lost  it.  What !  an  Englishman  wish  an  Eng- 
lish army  to  be  defeated?  Yes,  because  England  was 
wrong;  and  Fox  knew  it,  and  said  so. 

But  there  is  a  theory  lately  started,  or  rather  an  old  one 
revived,  that  war  is  a  good  thing  in  itself;  that  it  does  a 
nation  good  to  be  fighting  and  killing  the  patriot  sons  of 
another  nation,  who  love  their  country  as  we  do  ours.  We 
are  told  that  every  strenuous  man's  life  is  a  battle  of  some 


21 


kind,  and  that  the  virile  character  demands  some  physical 
belligerency.  Yes,  every  man's  life  must  be  to  a  great  ex- 
tent a  fight;  but  this  preposterous  doctrine  would  make 
every  man  a  prize-fighter. 

They  say  war  elicits  acts  of  heroism  and  self-sacrifice  that 
the  country  does  not  know  in  the  lethargy  of  peace.  Hero- 
ism and  self-sacrifice !  There  are  more  heroic  and  sacrificial 
acts  going  on  in  the  works  of  peace  every  day  thanthebrazen 
throat  of  war  could  proclaim  in  a  twelvemonth.  The  track 
,^of  every  practicing  physician  is  marked  by  heroic  disregard 
of  life  that  Napoleon's  Old  Guard  might  envy.  Every  fire 
like  that  of  Chicago,  every  flood  like  that  of  Johnstown, 
every  plague  and  famine  like  that  of  India,  are  fields  car- 
l^peted  with  the  flowers  of  heroic  self-sacrifice;  they  spring 
up  from  the  very  graves  and  ashes.  And  these  flowers  do 
not  have  grow  up  beside  them  the  poisoned  weeds  of  self- 
seeking  or  corruption,  which  are  sure  to  precede,  to  attend, 
to  follow  every  war.  The  dove  of  peace  that  brings  the 
leaves  of  healing  does  not  have  trooping  at  her  wings  the 
vultures  that  treat  their  living  soldiers  like  carrion.  When 
Lucan  has  run  throughout  the  catalogue  of  the  national 
miseries  that  followed  the  quarrel  of  Caesar  and  Pompey, 
he  winds  them  all  up  in  the  terrible  words,  multis  utile 
helium, — "war  profitable  to  many  men." 

There  is  now  much  questioning  of  the  propriety  of  capital 
punishment.  It  is  strongly  urged  that  the  State  has  no  right 
to  take  the  life  even  of  a  hardened  criminal,  whose  career 
has  shown  no  trace  of  humanity  or  usefulness,  and  has  put 
the  capstone  of  murder  on  every  other  crime.  And  yet  we 
are  told  it  is  perfectly  right  to  take  a  young  man  of  the 
highest  promise,  a  blessing  to  all  who  knew  him,  the  very 
man  to  live  for  his  country,  and  send  him  to  be  cut  down 
by  a  bullet  or  by  dysentery  in  a  cause  he  cannot  approve. 

But  there  is  a  still  newer  theory  come  up  about  war  as  ap- 
plied to  ourselves.  It  seems  that  we  share  with  a  very  few 
other  people  in  the  world  a  civilization  so  high  and  insti- 
tutions so  divine  that  it  is  our  duty  and  our  destiny  to  go 


22 

about  the  globe  swallowing  up  inferior  peoples,  and  bestow- 
ing on  them,  whether  they  will  or  not,  the  blessings  of  the 
American — Constitution?  \Yell,  no!  Not  of  the  American 
Constitution,  but  of  the  American  dominion, — and  that, 
when  we  are  once  started  on  this  work  of  absorption,  they 
are  rebels  who  do  not  accept  these  blessings.  Xow.  if  this 
precious  doctrine  be  true,  it  utterly  annihilates  the  old  no- 
tion of  patriotism  and  love  of  country  ;  for  that  nation  called 
upon  every  nation,  however  small  or  weak  or  backward,  to 
maintain  to  the  death  its  independence  against  any  other, 
however  great  or  strong  or  progressive.  According  to  this 
Mohammedan  doctrine,  this  "death  or  the  Koran"  doctrine, 
the  Finns  and  the  Poles  are  not  patriots  because  they  object 
to  being  absorbed  by  Russia,  and  the  Hamburgers  were 
rebels  for  not  accepting  the  beneficent  incorporation  into 
France  graciously  preferred  to  them  by  Marshal  Davoust. 

But  I  will  not  enlarge  upon  this  delicate  subject  of  mod- 
ern Americanism.  It  is  bad  enough  for  the  nations  we 
threaten  to  absorb.  It  is  worse  for  us,  the  absorbers.  I 
will  ask  you  to  remember  what  befell  a  noble  nation  which 
took  up  the  work  of  benevolently  absorbing  the  world. 

When  Xerxes  had  been  driven  back  in  tears  to  Persia,  his 
rout  released  scores  of  Greek  islands  and  cities  in  the  love- 
liest of  lands  and  seas  and  inhabited  by  the  brightest  and 
wisest  of  men.  There  is  nothing  in  art  or  literature  or 
science  or  government  that  did  not  take  its  rise  from  them. 
Their  tyrant  gone,  they  looked  round  for  a  protector.  They 
saw  that  Athens  was  mighty  on  the  sea,  and  they  heard  that 
she  was  just  and  generous  to  all  who  sought  her  citadel. 
And  they  put  themselves,  their  ships  and  treasure,  in  the 
power  of  Athens,  to  use  them  as  she  would  for  the  common 
defence.  And  the  league  was  scarcely  formed,  the  Persian 
was  but  just  crushed,  when  the  islands  began  to  find  that 
protection  meant  subjection.  They  could  not  bear  to  think 
that  they  had  only  changed  masters,  even  if  Aristides  him- 
self assigned  their  tribute;  and  some  revolted.  The  re- 
bellion was  put  down;  Athens  went  on  expanding;  she  made 
her  subject  islands  give  money  instead  of  ships,  she  trans- 


23 

ferred  the  treasury  to  her  own  citadel,  she  spent  the  money 
of  her  allies  in  those  marvellous  adornments  that  have  made 
her  the  crown  of  beauty  for  the  world  forever.  Wider  and 
wider  did  the  empire  of  the  Athenian  democracy  extend. 
Five  armies  fought  her  battles  in  a  single  year  in  five  lands ; 
Persia  and  Egypt,  as  well  as  Sparta,  feeling  the  valor  of  her 
soldiers.  And  the  heart  of  Athens  got  drunk  with  glory, 
and  the  brain  of  Athens  got  crazed  with  power,  and  the  roai> 
of  her  boasting  rose  up  to  heaven  joined  with  the  wail  of 
her  deceived  and  trampled  subjects.  And  one  by  one  they 
turned  and  fell  from  her  and  joined  their  arms  to  her  rival, 
who  promised  them  independence ;  and  every  fond  and  mad 
endeavor  to  retain  her  empire  only  sucked  her  deeper  into 
the  eddy  of  ruin,  till  at  length  she  was  brought  to  her  knees 
before  her  rival,  and  her  victorious  fleet  and  her  impregnable 
walls  were  destroyed  with  the  cry  that  now  began  the  free- 
dom of  Greece. 

It  was  only  the  beginning  of  new  slavery.  Enslaved  by 
the  faithless  Sparta,  who  sold  half  the  cities  back  to  Persia, 
patching  up  once  more  a  hollow  alliance  with  Athens;  en- 
slaved by  Macedonia,  enslaved  by  Rome,  enslaved  by  the 
Turks, — poor  Greece  holds  at  last  what  she  calls  her  in- 
dependence under  the  protection  of  the  great  civilizing  na- 
tions, who  let  her  live  because  they  cannot  agree  how  to  cut 
up  her  carcass  if  they  slay  her. 

Brethren,  even  as  Athens  began  by  protection  and  passed 
into  tyranny,  and  "then  into  ruin,  so  shall  every  nation  be 
who  interprets  patriotism  to  mean  that  it  is  the  only  nation 
^  in  the  world,  and  that  every  other  that  stands  in  the  way  of 
/what  it  chooses  to  call  destiny  must  be  crushed.    Love  your 
v*country,  honor  her,  live  for  her, — if  necessary,  die  for  her;> 
>ut  remember  that  whatever  you  would  call  right  or  wrong 
another  country  is  right  and  wrong  for  her  and  for  you, 
that  right  and  truth  and  love  to  man  and  allegiance  to  God 
are  above  all  patriotism,  and  that  every  citizen  who  sus- 
tains his  country  in  her  sins  is  responsible  to  humanity,  to 
history,  to  philosophy,  and  to  Him  to  whom  all  nations  are 
as  a  drop  in  the  bucket  and  the  small  dust  on  the  balance. 


DAY  USE 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


IN  STAC-N3 
rrn      '1  1GA7 

FIB    A  wo/ 

R.    NOV  1  n  19?3 

C&1}'    (             -           -''r 

FEB  15  1967 

